In less than two months, pitchers and catchers will report to spring training, and the 2014 baseball season will be right around the corner after that. For now, there still is hot stove business to be done, and it is still very much 2013, a year that baseball fans will remember for the constant lighting of mups — better known as the horrific overplaying of Fall Out Boy's "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up)" and its signature chorus, LIGHT A MUP MUP MUP.

As we bridge the gap between 2013 and 2014, here are thoughts on the National League West, as composed while listening to Fall Out Boy's album "Save Rock and Roll," clearly titled with the same thinking behind the idea that the Arizona Diamondbacks could have saved baseball by preventing the Los Angeles Dodgers from swimming in their pool.

Fall Out Boy (AP Photo)

Speaking of the Diamondbacks, the first song on "Save Rock and Roll" is titled "The Phoenix," and the first few notes sound like they could be played over a highlight of Mark Trumbo blasting a ball into the left field bleachers. Then the singing starts and you remember Trumbo's on-base percentage.

Trumbo works as a concept if you have a deep lineup and can put him in the No. 6 spot. Counting on him to be a main offensive contributor is asking for trouble, even on a team with Paul Goldschmidt. There's something to like about the Arizona lineup on paper, but then you realize that there are so many players like Aaron Hill. "I've always really liked Aaron Hill," you'll say, and then you realize that it's difficult to rely on him because he never seems to be able to stay healthy.

"You're the antidote to everything except for me." What does this even mean? I have no idea, but I think of Yasiel Puig, who is as exciting a baseball player as exists in the known universe, but whose tendency to make mistakes with both on-field decisions and matters of decorum lead to questions about whether he should be benched. These questions go on and on until you want to vomit, and there is no antidote other than to stop paying attention to Puig, which you can't do because he's going to do something unbelievably exciting.

The root of most things that Puig does that infuriate people is the kind of top-level self-confidence that enables him to do all of the wonderful things he does. Airmailing throws over cutoff men? Trying to take an ill-advised extra base? Flipping his bat? Yes, there's something to be said for humility, and it's an old standard phrase that the game has a way of humbling you, but be damned if anyone or anything humbles Puig. He would be 50 times less fun to watch as a humble player, because you wouldn't get the throws that nail runners, the daring dashes to get that extra base, or the bat flips on singles.

Puig can get better with his decision-making without selling his soul to conformity. If that happens, he has a chance to be a generational player.

"My heart is like a stallion" is a ridiculous lyric on "Alone Together" that does a good job of describing the Colorado Rockies, a team that has wandered through the offseason like Pete Wentz with a magnetic poetry kit, trying to fit things together that seem like they sound good but don't actually have much meaning at all.

That's a busy winter, but are the Rockies really any better? Helton retires, and they get another veteran lefty-swinging first baseman whose best days are behind him in Morneau. Colorado gets Anderson, but trades Pomeranz to get him in a deal of flawed left-handers. Hawkins is not all that different from Betancourt. You get the idea.

Colorado is changing at a high volume with little projectable effect, while the San Francisco Giants are having a relatively quiet winter with possibly big impact. Adding Tim Hudson to the starting rotation and Michael Morse to the lineup while bidding farewell to Barry Zito could put the Giants on track for a third World Series in five years. Could, but the Dodgers still have to be seen as the favorites, because as much as you might like Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Ryan Vogelsong, and Hudson, the Dodgers go Clayton Kershaw-Zack Greinke-Hyun-Jin Ryu at the top of their rotation, and that's going to be extremely difficult to compete against once again.

"Boys are smoking menthols, girls are getting back rubs." What kind of ridiculousness is this? "Where Did The Party Go," you ask without a question mark, Fall Out Boy? Probably somewhere where the lyricist has some idea of words that go together. This is followed by "Just One Yesterday," which is equally breathtaking in its badness. "I'd trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday." No, nobody would do that.

Okay, maybe the Diamondbacks would, but Tyler Skaggs' stock had dropped when he was sent to Anaheim in the Trumbo deal, and giving up Matt Davidson to acquire Addison Reed may have been a questionable trade, but Arizona isn't trading ALL of its tomorrows for just one yesterday. Archie Bradley, arguably the best pitching prospect in the game, is going nowhere.

Adding closers is a bit of a theme in the division, with the Diamondbacks picking up Reed to go with Brad Ziegler after Heath Bell got traded, the Dodgers retaining Brian Wilson and his beard for a daunting combination with Kenley Jansen, and the Padres signing Joaquin Benoit to accompany Huston Street.

The Padres are fascinating for their constant ability to churn out relievers, year after year. Whatever machine they use to do it is more efficient than whatever robot came up with "The Mighty Fall," which sounds like Fall Out Boy tried to put Molly Hatchett and Kanye West in a blender. San Diego employed its reliever development program to trade Luke Gregerson for Seth Smith, filling the need for a left-handed bat, but what makes the Padres an interesting team for 2014 is the starting rotation.

Andrew Cashner could be an ace if he takes the next step in his game. Josh Johnson could be an ace if he's healthy. Ian Kennedy works just fine as a No. 3 starter, then there's some kind of mix of Tyson Ross, Eric Stults, and the younger Robbie Erlin and Burch Smith.

Will San Diego hit enough? Staring at the screen isn't going to answer that question, and in fact, it will only allow "Miss Missing You" to infiltrate the brain. It's not a bad time for this to happen because there is nothing excruciatingly wrong with it, other than being part of this album. It's the Will Venable of Fall Out Boy songs, insofar as the only thing wrong with Will Venable is that he played basketball at Princeton, which is only offensive to me because I'm a Penn guy.

From an OPS+ standpoint, the only Padres hitters who produced at below league-average rates this year were catcher Nick Hundley and center fielder Alexi Amarista. The overall numbers don't look great because San Diego is such a pitching haven, but it's really not a bad lineup, and if your worst hitters are playing important defensive positions, so be it. Having Carlos Quentin healthy all season would be a big help, especially because depth remains an issue, but the fact is that the Padres ranked 11th in the National League with a 3.98 team ERA in 2013, and that is borderline unfathomable playing in their home park.

"Death Valley" is a not-noxious song. "Young Volcanoes" puts an end to the streak of less-than-objectionable musical material by presenting this as an opening lyric: "When Rome's in ruins, we are the lions, free of the coliseums." There is no legitimate way to connect this to baseball. Then there's a line about being "anti-venom," which is a nifty callback to the antidote line that was so ridiculous earlier and just makes you think LIGHT A MUP MUP MUP.

Young Volcano actually would be a decent nickname for Puig, with all respect to Vin Scully calling him Wild Horse. Scully remains the best in the business, leading a division of excellent broadcasters. If you have MLB Extra Innings on television or MLB.tv online, Dodgers games are a must-watch, just to hear Scully, who is 85 and once again is entering what may be his final season, because while he no longer does every road trip, he just can't seem to tear himself away to retire.

Working alone, Scully is better than every two- and three-man booth in sports, and that is with all due respect to the best pairing in baseball, San Francisco's Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper, who are closely trailed by Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly in Arizona. The Padres have Jerry Coleman on the radio and occasionally a Dick Enberg/Tony Gwynn combination on television, and I realize now that I have no idea who the Rockies' announcers are because I can't remember listening to a Colorado feed of a game, because, well, everyone else in this division is so great.

Oh, hey, here's Courtney Love on a Fall Out Boy song, because of course she is. This song is called "Rat A Tat," and how, exactly, this contributes to saving rock and roll, is anyone's guess. Actually, the biggest problem with the song is that there isn't enough Courtney Love. This is terrible, and I don't know why it exists.

"You need to lower the standards, because it's never getting any better than this." Well, the Dodgers won this division by 11 games, and that was with half a season of Hanley Ramirez, who could have been MVP if he had been healthy; less than half a season of Matt Kemp, who wasn't himself on the few occasions he was able to play; and only 104 games of Puig. It can get better, and that should scare the heck out of the rest of the division as much as having a broken clubhouse iPod that blasts LIGHT A MUP MUP MUP only at the most inopportune moments.

Take the Diamondbacks, for instance. They were 81-81, a record that came with a 34-21 mark in one-run games, and their biggest offseasons addition are a guy with a career on-base percentage below .300 and a closer who is coming off a season where his fastball velocity dropped two miles an hour.

The Rockies have done a lot of shuffling, but don't offer much reason to believe that they will be much better or much worse. Colorado kind of needs to figure out what it's doing, because hoping that everything will just come together and maybe the wild card comes into play... it doesn't really make for a good long-term plan.

The Padres seem to have a long-term plan based around pitching and a good but not great offense. They're not far off from the Kansas City catenaccio that has made the Royals into contenders, but the current pitching staff carries some questions — Johnson's health and the progress of the young guys leading the way. It should work eventually, but the odds have to be pretty long on 2014 being the year.

That leaves the Giants, who in the past four years have been world champions, out of the playoffs, world champions, and out of the playoffs. San Francisco is the only realistic challenger to Los Angeles, which should make for a classic feeling in the summer, but ultimately, the Dodgers have an edge in starting pitching, bullpen, and the lineup. If they stay healthy, it's hard to see anyone taking away that division title, although the Giants certainly are good enough to snag a wild card.

The last song on "Save Rock and Roll" is the titular track, featuring Elton John, and for the good of humanity, I will pretend that it never happened, instead ending with this picture of Puig and Snoop.